[brunoTbear]

Having recently purchased an engagement ring, I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now. I really hope the extraction of natural diamonds becomes a historical shame soon.

I do not understand people who want a natural stone. My buddy is marrying a woman who insisted on a natural rock. It’s one of many things wrong with her, and fits the pattern I’ve seen with her to a T.

[otherme123]

Ask the jeweller to put one natural rock on a table, among 1 synthetic and 8 Zircons, and let she choose the one she likes more.

[explaininjs]

Aren’t engagement rings supposed to be a surprise?

[skinner927]

An engagement should never be a surprise. The ring can be a surprise, but you’d do good to ask your partners input since it’s for them. Many couples go to the jewelers together to pick out, generally, why they want. The actual purchase can be made later.

[MrDunham]

My girlfriend, now wife of seven years, put together a Pinterest board of ring styles that she liked. It worked fantastically well… I still got to surprise her with the actual final ring and she was thrilled that it was the style that she liked and enjoyed the surprise.

Perhaps not for everyone but I certainly enjoyed having it be more thoughtful than me essentially clicking the buy button for her. She did, too.

[quickthrower2]

Why do people want a diamond at all is a good question to ask (and research). Shame $5k to charity isn’t the convention.

[dalbasal]

Or how about a proper dowry... that is the point.

A savings bond, or even a symbolic gold chain... provided that the price is reasonably represented in gold weight.

Dowries are/were a symbolic and real proof of financial fortitude, intent. They often a represent real safety net. In some cases, increase the woman (or man's) ability to leave a marriage, a liberty and power balance function.

So much of our modern culture is a corrupt cargo cult. We are completely removed from the meaning behind our symbolisms, both intellectually and culturally.

China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example. A copy of a copy with all meaning distilled to "winter shopping."

Anyway... there's no inherent reason for engagement rings, gifts or donations. If we like the traditional/cultural aspects... use them. Otherwise, why so sheep?

[ethanbond]

No longer purchasing women from fathers is a strict improvement over the allegedly pristine culture of the past.

Edit: Got the direction of money transfer wrong but the fundamental “two men agreeing to transact a woman” remains intact and, yes, despicable.

[flavius29663]

> No longer purchasing women from fathers

That is not how dowry worked. The bride brought the dowry, not the groom. So basically the father/family would pay the husband to be to take the daughter off their hands.

[Turing_Machine]

That depends entirely on the culture. Some expect the bride's family to pay the groom (dowry) while others expect the groom to pay the bride's family (bride price). Others are mixed (e.g. in the most common American culture, the groom is expected to pay for an expensive ring, while the bride's parents are expected to pay for an expensive wedding).

Generally, it boils down to economics. If the wife is not expected to be a direct source of family income (as in most of Western society until fairly recently -- it was considered vaguely shameful if the wife had to work outside the home), dowry is more common. If the wife does provide income (as in many African cultures, where the wife or wives do the majority of food production), bride price is more common.

Humans are seemingly infinitely variable in the ways in which they've invented workable cultures (not necessarily what one would call equitable, but workable).

[flavius29663]

Sure, but the OP was confusing dowry, which is common in western world, Europe, with bride price. People today are too squeamish about this, but in the past, the women were just not setup to be good main providers: it was hard physical labor working the fields, or in the forest, mines, construction etc. just meant the man was the provider, so the women had to be worked into this "workable culture"

[thaumasiotes]

As you can see, dowry is a misogynistic practice because women are worthless, whereas bride price is a misogynistic practice because women are valuable.

[ethanbond]

Yes it’s bad to transact other human beings regardless of how the buyer and seller view the economics of the situation.

[roughly]

I mean, both of them are misogynistic because they’re financial transactions in which one is exchanging ownership of a woman.

[mariuolo]

> dowry is a misogynistic practice because women are worthless

In the past, a woman had little chance of making a living of her own. That was the purpose of a dowry.

[ethanbond]

Ah yes you’re right. That’s a much better practice /s

[Aune]

Was that a thing though (in the west) as the dowry was usually brought by the womans family? Wasn't it more like the womans family bying the son in order to have someone to support them. Trades was not really a thing for most people throughout history so the ability to toil in the fields were of paramount importance as the only way to support the family.

[ethanbond]

Women have always worked on farms.

A solo man couldn’t create a self-sustaining farm either, yet somehow they weren’t the ones being bought and sold “for their own benefit.”

[dalbasal]

> No longer purchasing women from fathers is a strict improvement over the allegedly pristine culture of the past.

Blah. This is pious view, and a pious dismissal... not a thought out or real feminist perspective... imho.

The past (and present) is complicated... and patriarchal. Marriage, dowries, other symbols, customs and language around marriage... they all relate pretty directly to patriarchy because marriage was (and often still is) patriarchal.

Intertwined within that web were all sorts of dowry customs. Money can go either way, be symbolic or actual. It can explicitly represent a prospective divorce settlement... etc.

Diamond engagement rings happen to have very little to do with either patriarchy or liberty. They're just common consumer culture in a void that once housed real cultural content, whether those were patriarchal or otherwise.

[ethanbond]

What's the "pious view?" That women used to be treated as property (and still are in much of the world), or that that's bad?

> real cultural content

The "realness" of any "cultural content" is circularly defined by its culture. Nothing makes exchanging goats more "real" than exchanging a shiny rock or exchanging nothing at all.

[dalbasal]

you're right. culture doesn't exist, I suppose.

[isykt]

Agreed, and it has been enabled by the expectation that women are perfectly capable of earning a living.

There’s work to be done on the procreation part, though.

[mrkeen]

> China's adoption of Christmas and Christmas-like festivities for retail purposes is my favourite example

Indeed. Bring back Saturnalia!

[hutzlibu]

Or Yule in the more northern parts.

[dalbasal]

Or any other winter festival that was practiced before christmas, and christianity superseded it.

[yencabulator]

Plot twist: Northern Europe happily kept doing several of its pre-Christian activities. Christianity was superficially conformed to, to avoid repression, but it didn't really supersede as much as add to and slightly change things. For example, while you don't see people actually worshiping the old gods[1], the local version of Easter is filled with the old symbols of fertility, witches, and evil spirits.

[1]: If they ever were ever really "worshiped" in the modern sense, in an animistic belief system.

[GuB-42]

Dowries are the opposite. Paid by the wife's family to the husband's family. Justified because women don't work and are therefore a financial burden. So when a couple leaves their respective family, that's less expense for the wife's family and less income for the husband's family, the dowry is supposed to balance that.

It is not hard to understand why dowries are a thing of the past in western society. But it is still a thing in other parts of the world.

[dalbasal]

This is pointless semantics, like the perpetual insistence on correcting "monopoly" to "oligopsony" or whenever monopoly is discussed.

No one knows the word "dower," and the term "dowry" is used pretty widely to describe the entire mess of different customs that do and did exist. IRL, these are all symbolically complex and play a role that is usually different to the symbolic one.

Engagement rings are a riff on these.

[whiddershins]

Dowry is paid by the wife’s family. It’s the precise opposite of (as another commenter wrote) buying a wife.

[friend_and_foe]

Yup, a lot of people don't have realize it, but an engagement ring is a collateral to a commitment: you see no other men because we intend to marry and if I waste your time you're compensated for it with something valuable. Why anyone would use a diamond for something like this is beyond me.

Dowries upon marrying is an extension of this: if I abuse you and you have to leave me you can afford to live your life with this thing I gave you.

[helsinkiandrew]

Advertising!

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...

> In 1938, amid the ravages of the Depression and the rumblings of war, Harry Oppenheimer, the De Beers founder’s son, recruited the New York–based ad agency N.W. Ayer to burnish the image of diamonds in the United States, where the practice of giving diamond engagement rings had been unevenly gaining traction for years, but where the diamonds sold were increasingly small and low-quality.

> Meanwhile, the price of diamonds was falling around the world. The folks at Ayer set out to persuade young men that diamonds (and only diamonds) were synonymous with romance, and that the measure of a man’s love (and even his personal and professional success) was directly proportional to the size and quality of the diamond he purchased. Young women, in turn, had to be convinced that courtship concluded, invariably, in a diamond.

[rjzzleep]

For most people those 40k(or a lot more than that depending on where you are) that go into a wedding would be better served with a dinner at a nice restaurant and a down payment for an appartment/house.

[bafe]

40k sounds insane. I will spend around 2k for suit+shoes and around 5k for a restaurant dinner for 30 people. My fiancé spend around 2k for dress and accessories. And we didn't go cheap on anything

[kikokikokiko]

I don't know if it's just another example of my complete immunity towards advertising and marketing in all of it's forms, but one of the requirements I set early on when I started to think seriously about settling down was "she can't give any value, at all, to useless things like an idiotic ring with a dumb whisperer's rock on it". I found my girl thank God. Not being an american neither having lived in the US at any point in my life, it always amazed me that your society accepted as common knowledge that "you must spend X months of your salary on a dumb whisperer's rock to prove to your woman that you value her. The DeBeers corporation sure did a good job on you guys.

[isykt]

Companies are staffed by hundreds of people whose entire job, day and and day out, is to influence how you think about their products. You are not immune to advertising, and thinking that you are is naive. If your goal is reduce how influenced you are by people who sell things, understanding how they influence you and why is a better strategy.

[hfuyf65]

While we are likely aligned with regards to advertising, I would like you to consider a counter argument.

The rock is a rock, but its exaorbitant price serves as a threshold for potential mate selection. We may consider it crass, but animal kingdom is full of examples of females considering males based on specific criteria.

[kikokikokiko]

Yes, it's perfectly expected for females (on average) to give a lot of value to "useless" demonstrations of fitness when selecting a mate. The peacock exists.

But it's also perfectly expected for a male, if he's aware of these innate traits, when selecting a female partner, if he's looking for more important things other than looks and physical attractiveness, to give more "points" to different traits. In my case, intelligence was factor number 1. If she reaaally needs that stupid ring, she's out. In the end I got myself a PhD girlfriend, that is way smarter than me, and with whom I can have conversations way into my 80s. Mission accomplished. Thank you DeBeers for creating a standardized test to put potential wives through.

[corethree]

We like to tell ourselves intelligence is a factor. But really male attraction preferences are based on physical looks.

Personality is a close second but males are very simple in this department too. Men just want someone chill and nice and not crazy.

Intelligence and career come in next as mostly not considered at all. The young hot girl working at Starbucks does better than a older jaded PhD girl. Especially if that PhD girl is superficially fat. Good conversation isn't a factor here.

This is how most men operate. There are clearly exceptions. But more than exceptions there are men who lie to themselves and claim their base nature is above that.

Additionally I will say that intelligence doesn't wipe away a womens instinct. They still covet some sort of tribute from a romantic standpoint. Women can have high intelligence and still desire a ring. They can suppress this desire but this suppression isn't related to intelligence. Think about it, it doesn't take high IQ to understand what a blood diamond is.

Anyway sometimes in rare cases a man is highly desirable and extremely high value. If a man has a bunch of options among hot young women to choose from that is the only situation where intelligence plays a big role. Why not? Every woman is hot and nice and the only differentiator is intelligence. Go for it. That's probably your case. I imagine you have a bunch of hot super model esque girls pining for you and you picked the one who didn't want a ring and had a PhD. Good for you! Seriously. But note you are the exception not the rule.

[nwellinghoff]

I don’t think this is the case for most men I know. If you are just looking for “hot” you can date almost indefinitely these days. Marriage is a partnership and with the cost of living these days it might not be wise to choose “hot works at starbucks” over “smart and can contribute to the family”

[kikokikokiko]

I am aware that I have some attributes that made me very efective in the dating pool. I became single again in my early 30s, when the dating app boom was starting, circa 2014. I have always been in shape throughout my life, I am a house owner, and know how to write well and mantain a healthy conversation (I do not live in an english speaking country and it's not my native tongue).

Basically, the dating market available through dating apps is an infinite holodeck of available women, for men that have a reasonable enough sense of humor and specially, ARE NOT CREEPY AND NEVER, EVER, SEND A DICK PICK TO A WOMAN.

Really, it's that simple. Even when, eventually, a girl asks a guy for a "nude", NEVER, EVER, send one.

There's only two possibilities: it's either a real woman, and sending it or not will NOT make any difference in terms of the date going through or not, or the most probable possibility, it's a man on the other side of the conversation. No heterosexual man got extra points for sending nudes to a woman, ever.

After 2 and a half years of LITERALLY having dates every weekend, the revolving door of Starbucks 20 somethings becomes very boring. A non creepy man with middle class finances in his 30s can date anywhere from 18 to 40 year olds easily, and over time you start to realise that you prefer the company of the 35yo girls, but the looks of the 21s.

So I made a conscious decision to stop the machine at a certain point and settle down for a 26 year old girl 2 years away from defending her thesis. Now we're 6 years into a relationship and finally thinking about kids.

A man's instinct is to keep dating indefinitely for as long as he can, but believe me, EVERYTHING gets boring given enough time. I have no religion or any ideia about why we are on this world after all, but I believe that happiness is basically following our nature and doing what most fulfills our life from an experiences point of view.

I believe that a young man NEEDS to experience this phase of over polygamy, as well as I believe that having kids and passing your knowledge on to a new generation is an essential part of what being a human being is.

In the end, yes I was probably one of the few "high value men" that those apps tend to be so good at elevating. But once again I can tell you guys: I was never a great ladies man when it came to the traditional dating scene in the 90s and early 2000s. In person dating, on parties and the like, I was really average. On a dating app, it was really easy. Just don't be creepy.

And do not waste your early 30s guys. It's the most amazing time for a man to be on the dating scene, believe me. It's probably the closest a man can feel of what it's like to be a woman at the top of her powers, 18 to 25.

[matisseverduyn]

> But it's also perfectly expected for a male, if he's aware ... looking for more important things ...

I wonder if any Bowerbirds have shared your revelation.

[hfuyf65]

This a fascinating wiki entry. Thank you for making HN a more interesting place for all.

On a separate note, it seems the ornate courtship is offset with regular polygamy. I might be reading too much into it and try to extrapolate to human behavior, which is way more messy.

[rad_gruchalski]

> In the end I got myself a PhD girlfriend

Did you have them lined up and you picked one?

[kikokikokiko]

Pretty much. That's what dating apps are for.

[Roark66]

>The rock is a rock, but its exaorbitant price serves as a threshold for potential mate selection.

Indeed, but don't we already have much more practical things that serve the same purpose? For example a nice house/apartment or a car. Things we own, even what kind of furniture we have. All this communicates ones ability to provide for a family better than a rock. Gold itself is much better (preferably in bars or coins, not jewellery).

The problem with diamonds isn't that they are only a token of value. The problem is that they are extremely overvalued during the first purchase in jewellery. If one could buy an engagement ring for $10k then 10 years later sell it and make profit with regards to inflation (like it was a gold coin/bar) I would have no problem with it.

[corethree]

Those don't work. The sacrifice must have zero utility.

It's unequivocally clear to a woman and to all other women who she shows the ring too that the ring was 100 percent a tribute to her and only to her and only for that purpose.

Like peacocking the peacocks feather has zero utility. It is purely a mating ritual. A car or a house is not as clear because it has shared utility.

[corethree]

The keyword is "romance" any romantic gesture tends to have zero utility.

Buying a car or a house for a woman is not romantic at all. in terms of "romance" women tend to be looking for a clear and unequivocal display of devotion.

[yencabulator]

I'm married and neither of us has a ring of any kind. It is possible to find reasonable, non-materialistic, people, even in the US. The average mindset can be quite disappointing for sure -- but hey, we're aiming for above-average mates right?

(Pro-tip: If you find yourself surrounded by people with incredibly old school value systems and no desire to think for themselves, move to one of the bigger melting pot cities on the coasts. You'll find others like you already did.)

[friend_and_foe]

For me it was the opposite: move to the middle of nowhere because big city girls are materialistic and more often than not unscrupulous in my experience. It worked.

[friend_and_foe]

I'm an american but I found mine too. She gets the diamond thing, but I believe in real tradition and the power of some of these organic customs. A valuable gift upon engagement is a collateralized commitment. I told her I'd get her something valuable, not just expensive, because there's a difference. She gets it.

[wodenokoto]

My mom is absolutely certain her wedding ring has appreciated.

And it’s my “I read it online” vs hers “I talked with a jeweler”

Which to be honest I’d call a draw.

[bluGill]

Well given the likely amount of inflation between when your mom got married and now it probably has appreciated. It hasn't kept pace with inflation though.

[Mizoguchi]

The way some diamonds (say a 2 carat round VSS1) refract light is pretty damn spectacular, no other rock or material can match it, so that may be a reason why some people want them.

[adrian_b]

There are a few other minerals that have both higher refractive index and higher dispersion than diamonds, so they could be used to make more spectacular gems than the diamonds.

However the cheaper of them (e.g. rutile, i.e. titanium dioxide) are not suitable for rings, because they have lower hardness so they would be scratched by dust.

Among those hard enough, moissanite could be used for more spectacular optical effects than diamond, though normally it is used in such a way as to mimic diamond, instead of trying to use its superior optical characteristics, to make it stand out.

[corethree]

You don't need research. It's common sense. You're human so it's easy to figure out. It's possible that our modern woke culture makes this harder analyze because it's very one sided in terms of gender. It's completely obvious why diamonds are coveted, but you'll still see a lot of attempts by to rationalize a different reason. What I'm about to describe is something that is completely obvious to everyone and something you likely already know but find hard to articulate:

Desire for diamonds is centered around women. It's part of human mating rituals.

A lot of women demand sacrifice or some sort of proof that the man loves her and is willing to sacrifice resources to take care of her. Romance is 100 percent what this is. It's always a man putting in a romantic gesture and a woman making a practical decision based on that gesture(s). Society often gets these roles reversed but in actuality: men are the romantic sex, women are the practical sex. I like to note here that a woman is not consciously thinking this is a practical choice, but rather her instincts drive her in this direction as much as a man's instincts drive him to make irrational tributes to her.

One form of this sacrifice comes in the form of material jewelery. First the sacrifice needs to be a literal "sacrifice" or basically useless in terms of utility. Second it needs to be "showable" meaning the woman can use the thing and "show" other people that a man sacrificed a huge amount of money just for her.

Diamonds fulfill the above request more than anything else. If a woman has a house it's not clear whether the house was a sacrifice just for her or for him as well, but if she has a diamond it is 100 percent clear it was for her and nothing else. This is why the zero utility aspect is important. It is the ultimate way to communicate the nature of the "sacrifice". It is not a coincidence why a bouquet flowers also fills this role of "tribute". Cut Flowers are both useless and ephemeral communicating the act of "sacrifice" unequivocally.

So that's where it comes from. Human mating rituals. Diamonds are pleasing to the eye but there plenty of cheap forms of gemstones that are pleasing to the eye too and you don't see women coveting that stuff. The rarity and mostly zero utility nature of a diamond ring makes it an object ideal for tribute.

It is a shame, but you can't deny human nature. Women want tribute from men and they want to put that tribute on display to show off their status. Men will as a result fight tooth and nail for the status and the ability to provide a high value woman with that tribute. Entire businesses will spawn and form around this human behavioral quirk and one of these industries is the diamond industry.

That's the way the world works. Let me be clear though. If diamonds didn't exist... something else would fill this role of tribute. There will be an entire industry spawned around some other useless thing and women will highly covet that thing as tribute. It's not purely the fault of the diamond industry as many people seem to think. The diamond industry is simply filling a niche that if they didn't fill, would've been filled by something else.

[teolandon]

Your comments reek of pseudosciency pop evolutionary biology bullshit. Human behavior is way more complicated than you would hope. Explanations like these that make intuitive sense but are not backed by any real science have been used to condone harmful behavior in the past. We can, and always end up doing better.

Also diamonds are not rare. Look into the history of the diamond industry. It didn't spawn because society needed to use something for "mating rituals", they advertised their way to become that.

[corethree]

>Your comments reek of pseudosciency pop evolutionary biology bullshit. Human behavior is way more complicated than you would hope.

It's not "pop" shit. It's from a field called evolutionary psychology. A very real field in academia.

By the nature of what's being studied evolutionary psychology is harder to statistically quantify things as they do in the hard science like physics and chemistry. What they do is they study commonalities between multiple cultures and come up with qualitative conclusions based off of the most likely inductive and logical explanation for those observed commonalities. This is quite common in the soft social sciences.

Tribute to women and other mating displays from males... aka "romance" is across the board found in many divergent cultures. It is even found in animals.

In animals generally the female species is the one being courted or romanced. This occurs because the female is the one that carries the child so she is the "gatekeeper".

It is real and there are authoritative sources that illustrate what I say. There are many sources where you can read about this stuff.

Here's one: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology https://a.co/d/01Caa1v

>Also diamonds are not rare.

Rare enough such that diamonds can fill the role of a tribute object. Yes advertising does play a part but if diamonds were so abundant that they're only 10 bucks a pop women wouldn't care for one at all. Of course with the advent of synthetic diamonds the market value of diamonds is now largely artificial.

All of this, however, does not detract from my point. If it's.not diamonds, it'd be something else.

[hunter-gatherer]

Interesting community, this HackerNews site... I'm not sure I agree with everything you said, but I think I agree with a lot of it. Not long ago a book titled "12 Rules to Live By" (peterson) was mentioned and spoke highly about so I've started reading it based on HN recommendations. I say "interesting community" because a lot of what you posted is in line with the first chapter in that book, yet here you are recieving downvotes.

[corethree]

It's because it clashes with liberal ideologies which is the dominant culture on HN, colleges and california. What I'm saying comes from a field called evolutionary psychology. I believe Jordan Peterson gets a lot of his knowledge from there. But also what I'm saying is stupendously obvious.

HN does have a scientific slant for sure but unbeknownst to it's very users they also have a extreme liberal bias among certain users as well.

I would say I have a roughly equal amount of upvotes and downvotes. At one point my post was up by 3 and now it's at 0.

Its Science and evolutionary psychology vs. extreme liberalism.

In extreme liberalism Basically all genders are equal and reasonable there can be no major differences or negative things said about either. Feelings are more important then reality as evolutionary psychology has a lot of negative things to say about the human experience that make genders unequal in even taboo places like "intelligence"

I've talked about this stuff before in other venues that are in person where people who disagree have to be mostly polite. What I have found is that men largely agree while women do not. Even though I'm basically calling men irrational creatures fighting like idiots for women's approval, men are generally more accepting of that negative label then women are of being called the "practical" sex. I thought women would be more accepting of that label given they've been stereotyped as "emotional" since the dawn of time. Being practical tends to be a compliment... But anyway...

This explains the 50-50 thing I'm seeing going on here with the votes. The line is probably divided between gender... Women and very liberal people tend to not agree while most Men do agree.

[hunter-gatherer]

I can tell you've had to articulate this before. I admire your courage in the year 2020+ to discuss the topic. This explanation makes sense.

[hyperliner]

Not everybody has $5k to give away to charity, but they have $5k to give to De Beers.

[max_]

The luxurious value of a diamond comes from the fact that it is expensive.

Making a cheap diamond maybe useful for industrial applications, but for luxurious purposes (engagement rings & jewellery et al) it's counter productive.

[mpsprd]

I disagree. As someone who doesn't own jewelry, I must admit nothing blings like diamond.

Go to the London tower and look at the crown jewels. It's jaw dropping.

It's of course a way of displaying your wealth, but it also reflects and scatters light in an incredible way.

[ftxbro]

> nothing blings like diamond.

fair enough if part of the bling is being dazzled by the price or prestige, but optically moissanite has a more brilliant refractive index than diamond

[max_]

Do you really think the "bling value" is what makes some diamonds cost in the tens of thousands of dollars?

The "bling value" does exist. But a diamond jewelry is mostly to signal status. If the signal is cheap, the value is worthless.

Just buy your wife an engagement ring and tell her it's a cheap, second hand, artificial diamond and watch the light die out of her eyes.

[AtlasBarfed]

moassinite

[bafe]

I got a natural diamond for my fiancé but with a twist: it's an old stone that the jeweler I choose recycled from old jewelry. Same for the gold, she's used old gold

[slaw]

Old gold as opposed to a newly made gold from a fresh supernova?

[bafe]

Old gold as in jewelry being molten and cast again instead of being made from recently mined gold

[markisus]

Do you think that autographed memorabilia should not be worth more than un-autographed counterparts? Or original paintings vs reproductions?

[isykt]

Neither autographed memorabilia nor original paintings are regularly produced through the systematic exploitation and murder of entire populations, and neither autographed memorabilia nor original paintings had their value fabricated through a sales campaign which leveraged romantic conventions of western culture.

It’s not really a reasonable comparison.

[markisus]

With respect to your first point, we should all make sure the products we buy are ethically produced. But this has no bearing on the question of whether it's rational to assign higher prices to naturally produced diamonds. There are many other things that are unethically produced, that people pay high prices for, and where those prices are viewed as sensible (eg. oil, smart phones, opioids).

As for your second point, there is a large marketing component for most things that are bought and sold, including art and memorabilia. You say that for diamonds, the value is fabricated. But I believe the fabrication of value creates real consequences. It's not trivial to coordinate the action and common knowledge of an entire population. If you do it right, it creates a new Nash equilibrium. If someone then gifts you a "natural" diamond, it is irrational to sell it at the "synthetic" price. Your buyer might even be a diamond dealer who also believes the natural-synthetic thing is a marketing scam. The whole population can even know the whole situation is fabricated. But unless they can all coordinate and change the market price in unison, it doesn't make sense to deviate from the equilibrium.

[isykt]

> But this has no bearing on the question of whether it's rational to assign higher prices to naturally produced diamonds.

Sure it does. In economics, it’s called a negative externality, and it’s a common topic when discussing pricing the output of industrial processes.

>But unless they can all coordinate and change the market price in unison…

They don’t need to. We have governments that do that, through mechanisms like taxes and tariffs.

[thaumasiotes]

> I am amazed by how inexpensive synthetic diamonds have become. Back in 2015 I paid for a natural stone. Prices then were nuts. You can get so much more weight, color, and clarity now.

I used to get synthetic cut rubies and sapphires (same mineral) from a bulk supplier. 12mm sapphires were about $12 each. Rubies were a lot cheaper than that.

[hardware2win]

Ppl pressuring on natural diamonds are, uh...